Film

70 www.timeoutamsterdam.nl  March 2011

Film

March 2011  www.timeoutamsterdam.nl 71

Film

Feast your eyes

Film

Film

We do it several times a day, morning, noon and night, and sometimes even more often, with an afternoon quickie or an evening snack. We do it every-where: at home, in public, with friends and family, and sometimes even in bed. It’s as essential to life as breath-ing – yet how much do we really think about the way we eat?

Food has a plethora of meanings and consequences, from our relation-ship with our mothers to the way we define our cultural heritage. No wonder it holds a central role in many films, with so many opportunities for interpretation, information and drama – even in horror movies, people sometimes eat each other.

Two food-related film events in town this month – the Food Film Festival at Studio/K and EYE Film Institute’s series Film & Food – are serving up great helpings of documen-taries, features and opportunities for debate on that simple act that keeps us alive. They’re also offering the real thing: food itself.

‘We discover so much about our societies, about our views and icons of food, through looking at film – far more than we’d think,’ says Louise Fresco, an internationally renowned author and scientist at the University of Amsterdam, who cooked up the Food Film Festival.

Taking over Studio/K 18 to 20 March, the festival offers food-related entertainment, 18 documentaries and two feature film screenings and cook-ing workshops, with a side of healthy debate. At the same time, EYE has concocted a special food-related feature film programme that will run every Wednesday this month, accompanied by lectures and thematic dinners.

The Food Film Festival is an initiative of the Youth Food Movement,

an international network of students, consumers and food professionals, including farmers, fishermen and cooks, who first decided to tackle the issue of food quality and sustainability back in 2007.

‘This first edi-tion of the festival aims at inspiring visitors to be get actively involved in sustainabil-ity,’ says festival Director Helen Kranstauber. ‘We hope to show peo-ple that activism can be fun.’

Fun as in, screening ‘Divine Pig’ (in English), a documentary that follows the life of a

Unfold your napkins: March is eye-candy month in Amsterdam. Marie-Charlotte Pezé explores two very dif-ferent foodie film festivals

piglet all the way to the slaughterhouse – followed by a mouth-watering workshop (in Dutch) on sausage-making. (Tip:

getting attached to the main character may be a bad idea.)

Another film in the programme, ‘The End of the Line’, is an English-language documentary about the many ways over-fishing is destroying our oceans; while ‘Hunger’ explores the paradox between western overproduction

and the otherwise widespread issue of food scarcity.

Kranstauber says sustainability isn’t only a matter of protecting the environment or consumers’ health; we also need to think about the labourers and their environment. Even a stark documentary like ‘Food Inc.’, which makes you wonder if gnawing on tree bark is the only acceptable nourish-ment in today’s fast food economy, doesn’t begin to touch all the complex dynamics of a worldwide puzzle.

Buying ‘slow food’ or fair trade organics is a step in the right direction, says Fresco, but ‘it’s not realistic to expect we could feed 9 billion people [in 2050] with organic food.’ Fresco owns up to sometimes shopping at Albert Heijn, because slow food can be an expensive, elitist and time-consuming business. While acknowledging that there are few quick fixes, she says a film festival can be used as an outreach tool, demonstrating to consumers that

Cud it be magic?: ‘Fast Food Inc’ looks at today’s fast food economy

Class act: Studio/K’s Food Film Festival features workshops

they actually command more power than they realise.

‘It’s a question of supply and demand,’ says Kranstauber. ‘There will be a turning point [in the food industry] if enough consumers ask for it.’

The festival’s not all grim and political, though. As Fresco says, ‘there’s a dystopia in food documen-tary filmmaking. It’s either a nostalgic “Aaw, we can’t go and stroke the cows anymore” or hyper-negative, à la Michael Moore, deploring how we’re destroying the world.’

To depart from the clichés, their se-lection also presents an opportunity for good food film fun, with the ebullient ‘Kings of Pastry’ (a workshop we’d sign up for – there’s no crying over the poor dead pastries) or ‘El Bulli’, about capricious celebrity chef Ferran Adrià. Wine tasting and a Food & Film quiz are also on the programme.

Helen Westerik, who happens to be Fresco’s collaborator on Dutch-language food-in-film book ‘Verraad, verleiding en verzoening’ (‘Betrayal, seduction and reconciliation’), is at the helm the concurrent Film & Food night programme at EYE each Wednesday. In this, its third edition, the theme is a little more light-hearted

than at the festival: Pleasure. ‘Food says so much about our identity,’ says Westerik. ‘It should be celebrated.’

In this spirit, EYE is serving rata-touille before screening Disney Pixar’s animated movie, which, according to Fresco, is almost an ode to Proust. They’ll also treat audiences to a delicious Italian dish before ‘Big Night’ with Stanley Tucci; and Asian noodles before ‘Tampopo’ (in Japanese with Dutch sub-titles). All together, it will be five movies, five meals, five cultural adventures.

Although there’s a lot of negativity out there to worry us about the future of food production, ‘it’s also important to remember the joyful side of food’, says Fresco.

Food Film Festival is 18-20 March at Studio/K, Timorplein 62; events are in both English and Dutch, about half will either be in English or have English subtitles; for event details check foodfilmfestival.nl. Film & Food series screenings and lectures take place at the EYE Film Insti-tute at Vondelpark 3 and at Spui 25; check eyefilm.nl for further details. Note: films not in English have Dutch subtitles.

‘There is a dystopia in food documentary filmmaking. It’s either a nostalgic cows-stroking or hyper-neg-ative, à la Michael Moore’

The End of the Line Divine Pig Hunger Tampopo Big Night Ratatouille

Film

70 www.timeoutamsterdam.nl  March 2011

Film

March 2011  www.timeoutamsterdam.nl 71

Film

Feast your eyes

Film

Film

We do it several times a day, morning, noon and night, and sometimes even more often, with an afternoon quickie or an evening snack. We do it every-where: at home, in public, with friends and family, and sometimes even in bed. It’s as essential to life as breath-ing – yet how much do we really think about the way we eat?

Food has a plethora of meanings and consequences, from our relation-ship with our mothers to the way we define our cultural heritage. No wonder it holds a central role in many films, with so many opportunities for interpretation, information and drama – even in horror movies, people sometimes eat each other.

Two food-related film events in town this month – the Food Film Festival at Studio/K and EYE Film Institute’s series Film & Food – are serving up great helpings of documen-taries, features and opportunities for debate on that simple act that keeps us alive. They’re also offering the real thing: food itself.

‘We discover so much about our societies, about our views and icons of food, through looking at film – far more than we’d think,’ says Louise Fresco, an internationally renowned author and scientist at the University of Amsterdam, who cooked up the Food Film Festival.

Taking over Studio/K 18 to 20 March, the festival offers food-related entertainment, 18 documentaries and two feature film screenings and cook-ing workshops, with a side of healthy debate. At the same time, EYE has concocted a special food-related feature film programme that will run every Wednesday this month, accompanied by lectures and thematic dinners.

The Food Film Festival is an initiative of the Youth Food Movement,

an international network of students, consumers and food professionals, including farmers, fishermen and cooks, who first decided to tackle the issue of food quality and sustainability back in 2007.

‘This first edi-tion of the festival aims at inspiring visitors to be get actively involved in sustainabil-ity,’ says festival Director Helen Kranstauber. ‘We hope to show peo-ple that activism can be fun.’

Fun as in, screening ‘Divine Pig’ (in English), a documentary that follows the life of a

Unfold your napkins: March is eye-candy month in Amsterdam. Marie-Charlotte Pezé explores two very dif-ferent foodie film festivals

piglet all the way to the slaughterhouse – followed by a mouth-watering workshop (in Dutch) on sausage-making. (Tip:

getting attached to the main character may be a bad idea.)

Another film in the programme, ‘The End of the Line’, is an English-language documentary about the many ways over-fishing is destroying our oceans; while ‘Hunger’ explores the paradox between western overproduction

and the otherwise widespread issue of food scarcity.

Kranstauber says sustainability isn’t only a matter of protecting the environment or consumers’ health; we also need to think about the labourers and their environment. Even a stark documentary like ‘Food Inc.’, which makes you wonder if gnawing on tree bark is the only acceptable nourish-ment in today’s fast food economy, doesn’t begin to touch all the complex dynamics of a worldwide puzzle.

Buying ‘slow food’ or fair trade organics is a step in the right direction, says Fresco, but ‘it’s not realistic to expect we could feed 9 billion people [in 2050] with organic food.’ Fresco owns up to sometimes shopping at Albert Heijn, because slow food can be an expensive, elitist and time-consuming business. While acknowledging that there are few quick fixes, she says a film festival can be used as an outreach tool, demonstrating to consumers that

Cud it be magic?: ‘Fast Food Inc’ looks at today’s fast food economy

Class act: Studio/K’s Food Film Festival features workshops

they actually command more power than they realise.

‘It’s a question of supply and demand,’ says Kranstauber. ‘There will be a turning point [in the food industry] if enough consumers ask for it.’

The festival’s not all grim and political, though. As Fresco says, ‘there’s a dystopia in food documen-tary filmmaking. It’s either a nostalgic “Aaw, we can’t go and stroke the cows anymore” or hyper-negative, à la Michael Moore, deploring how we’re destroying the world.’

To depart from the clichés, their se-lection also presents an opportunity for good food film fun, with the ebullient ‘Kings of Pastry’ (a workshop we’d sign up for – there’s no crying over the poor dead pastries) or ‘El Bulli’, about capricious celebrity chef Ferran Adrià. Wine tasting and a Food & Film quiz are also on the programme.

Helen Westerik, who happens to be Fresco’s collaborator on Dutch-language food-in-film book ‘Verraad, verleiding en verzoening’ (‘Betrayal, seduction and reconciliation’), is at the helm the concurrent Film & Food night programme at EYE each Wednesday. In this, its third edition, the theme is a little more light-hearted

than at the festival: Pleasure. ‘Food says so much about our identity,’ says Westerik. ‘It should be celebrated.’

In this spirit, EYE is serving rata-touille before screening Disney Pixar’s animated movie, which, according to Fresco, is almost an ode to Proust. They’ll also treat audiences to a delicious Italian dish before ‘Big Night’ with Stanley Tucci; and Asian noodles before ‘Tampopo’ (in Japanese with Dutch sub-titles). All together, it will be five movies, five meals, five cultural adventures.

Although there’s a lot of negativity out there to worry us about the future of food production, ‘it’s also important to remember the joyful side of food’, says Fresco.

Food Film Festival is 18-20 March at Studio/K, Timorplein 62; events are in both English and Dutch, about half will either be in English or have English subtitles; for event details check foodfilmfestival.nl. Film & Food series screenings and lectures take place at the EYE Film Insti-tute at Vondelpark 3 and at Spui 25; check eyefilm.nl for further details. Note: films not in English have Dutch subtitles.

‘There is a dystopia in food documentary filmmaking. It’s either a nostalgic cows-stroking or hyper-neg-ative, à la Michael Moore’

The End of the Line Divine Pig Hunger Tampopo Big Night Ratatouille